King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard are synonymous with versatility at this point. The incomparably prolific Aussie sextet has released no fewer than 26 full-length albums over the course of their 14-year career, with entire LPs being singularly devoted to the band’s explorations of genres as disparate as psychedelic indie, synth pop, progressive rock, jazz fusion, and speed metal – and that’s just for starters. More importantly, the ever-growing “Gizzverse,” despite its now almost monolithic quantity, has with little variance offered distinctly high-quality music at every turn, owed in large part to band’s irresistible, highly unique artistic voice springing ever to the fore of its genre trappings to create a through-line within their myriad discography. Their latest single “Phantom Island” offers a first taste of the band’s latest categorical foray – this time into the timbre-rich world of orchestral rock.
“Phantom Island,” like its creators, contains multitudes. It beings with a tantalizing, piano-centric and purely orchestral swell, colored with strings, woodwinds, and brass that sound plucked right off of one of Curtis Mayfield’s film soundtracks. All the elements of a rock band proper join in shortly thereafter, accompanying a sidestep into poppier territory, then back again. The tuneful lead vocal and idiomatically busy orchestral atmosphere serve to distill King Gizzard’s own eccentricities into a potent 70s flavored cocktail that, in spite of frequent changes, still sounds remarkably focused. Hell, the lyrics are only interrupted by one trademark high pitched exclamation of “woo!” – and near the song’s close at that. Compare that to the songs of Nonagon Infinity, on which that single syllable is interjected throughout the lyrics a grand total of 51 times (by fan estimations).
Of course, without a little bit of madness and excess, it wouldn’t truly be Gizz: melody and instrumentation give way to new combinations with rapidity as off-kilter syncopations stab with brief punches of variance to keep the listener ever on their toes – and that’s all to say nothing of the seismic shift that occurs shortly after the song’s halfway point. An up-tempo metric modulation kicks the whole affair into high gear in a way that recalls “Dragon” (from the band’s recent speed metal-oriented album PetroDragonic Apocalypse) as much as it does R&B or jazz fusion. Perhaps in that similarity is one explanation for the band’s seemingly effortless genre-bending: King Gizzard are storytellers, and just like the highly segmented and relentlessly dynamic tendencies of the heaviest of heavy metal, “Phantom Island” unfolds in chapters.
Within its five minute runtime, “Phantom Island” weaves an odyssey of sonic and sensory ecstasy around a vision of topical (and tropical) madness in a way that’s immediately exciting, endlessly compelling, and, ultimately, highly listenable. King Gizzard haven proven once again that there is no aural territory on which they’re unable to make their own indelible mark, and that not even the might of a full orchestra can drown out a sound that’s quintessentially Gizz.